NCSLMA Conference November

Beth and I are presenting a session at the upcoming NCSLMA conference in Winston-Salem titled Lucy and Ethel Tackle the Overdue Blues: A Roundtable Discussion. Conference participants can download a copy of our file at our high school library website by clicking on the link that follows, scrolling down the page to NCSLMA conference, and clicking on Overdue Checklist! Enjoy and click HERE.

Want to travel--visit GeoBeats!

This is a site for students and teachers who want to travel from their chairs! I can picture these videos being used in so many classes in so many different and creative ways. I see students embedding these videos in blogs or wikis they create on different countries. The mind runs wild with possibilities!

Or, I see tired teachers just watching these videos, and dreaming of exciting places to travel! These videos are refreshments for the mind--if you don't believe me, check out the video on the chocolate shops of Paris.

Countries with videos include Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Switzerland, Thailand, Trinidad, and the UK (London and Glasgow).

Just click on GeoBeats!

Scary Smelly Cheese Tasting

We are going to host a cheese tasting workshop for 10 students after school in the media center on October 30th, 2007. We are going to limit the workshop to the first 10 students who sign up and pay us the $2.00 cost we are charging (the library is picking up the remainder of the cost). Students will sample 3 smelly cheeses and will be introduced to information about each one. I am actually posting this to practice embedding video in my blog. I found this video on cheese tasting at http://www.geobeats.com/videoclips/france/paris/cheese-shop.

Need a lesson plan? A word search generator? A worksheet template? Try this website!

While my circulation system is down, I decided to search the Internet for ideas for retrieving overdue books. I stumbled upon an amazing website created by teachers, for teachers. It is very high school oriented--something difficult to find. It even contains some well-crafted 10th grade writing practice prompts. Also on the site under Tools are Word Search generators and other handy tools of this nature.

Go to We the Teachers! Kudos to the maker of this site!

Google for Educators! More great stuff!!

It's the little things that make librarians happy--just got a newsletter from Google and learned they are testing a free, yes I said free, webpage creator and host! Any of us can quickly and easily make our own webpages!!
Go to :
http://www.google.com/educators/p_pagecreator.html
Also, check out the other tools, posters, handouts etc. at Google for Educators!
http://www.google.com/educators/index.html
If you click on classroom activities, there is a page creator crib sheet, as well as crib sheets for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. And for English department folks, check out http://www.googlelittrips.com/. I haven't had time to play with this but it looks really interesting.

OpenOffice

If, like me, you purchased a new computer that only had a trial version of MSOffice, you may be looking for an affordable alternative. Try OpenOffice. To check out this product, go to www.openoffice.org. It even has a product called Impress that is a presentation software solution. Remember, if you move documents back and forth from school to home you will have to be careful how you save your files to be able to convert them to the software we run at school! For links to other free, open source software programs, go to http://richtech.ca/seul/ .

New books for students

Beth and I went on a Barnes and Noble run last week--then Jeanne and I took some students by there on Friday. As a result of our run, we added, or will soon add over 130 new books to the media center. Check our reading blog at www.librarygoddess47.blogspot.com (Knight-time reads!) for a complete list of titles. These books have been flying off of our shelves! As of yesterday morning, our library has circulated almost 13, 983 books or magazines since October 1, 2006. Today, we went over 14, 000! Not too shabby!

Websites for you to explore!

I have a few websites I've read about today that some of you may be familiar with--but hopefully, some of you will enjoy exploring!

The Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (Free) Web site has been redesigned. This site is worthy of your time, and has a massive amount of sources for all disciplines, even Health and PE! There is a new subject map that features more than 100 topics and resources for each. You can also search by discipline. Over 1500 resources are included on this site! Disciplines covered include Arts & Music, Health & PE, History and Social Studies, Language Arts, Math, and Science.

I know many of you may be familiar with the Web English Teacher site, but thought I'd just remind you of this resource. To find Language arts curricula, share ideas, and find new ways to complement what you are already doing, so to http://www.webenglishteacher.com/.

For you science folks, go to Court TV's education division to find resources for using Crime Scene Forensics in the science classroom. Students see so much of this stuff on TV that they are fascinated by it! Check out Court TV's Forensics in the Classroom (FIC) . They are also offering a $1000.00 grant for educators!

NCCAT

If you noticed there were no posts last week on this blog, it is because I had the BEST week of my educational career at NCCAT! I was lucky enough to attend NASCAR: Science on the Racetrack last week and I don't have the words to tell you how much I enjoyed it, and how much I learned! I feel renewed and envigorated! I got the privilege to attend with the best group of educators our state has to offer--people who were fun and caring! We met the most amazing people--the Petty family, engineers, employees at Petty Enterprises, Sam Bass, even people we talked to in restaurants that were involved with the motorsports industry (just to name a few)! The NCCAT staff is beyond incredible! We spent part of the week at Victory Junction Gang Camp and the rest of the week in Mooresville, where we toured Penske, participated in a pit crew exercise at PitCrewU, and toured the Sam Bass Gallery and Lowe's Motorspeedway! You just haven't lived until you've ridden around the Charlotte track in a 15 passenger van! On the right side of this blog, I've included links to a blog on our experience created by Robin Sawyer--from their you can see our web albums with pictures of our experience, and a photo of our pit crew! I am in the Motorcraft hat on the left! I urge each of our faculty members to apply to NCCAT--the options for learning are many!

Wikis are here--use them to go paperless!

Trust me, if I can set up this blog, you all can set up class wikis. To get a feel for all that you can do with a wiki, go to 43 folders, a wiki for Cornell notes. Then, go to the Teachers First tutorial on Wiki Ideas for the Classroom. This tutorial will walk you through setting up a wiki, and ideas for using it in the classroom, and what your students can gain from using wikis. I do think using wikis and blogs can help us save paper, increase student response to assignments, etc. For example, let's say you require your students to each read and respond to 4 health-related (or science, or civics) current events per semester. Instead of running off each current event, (sometimes with 2 to 3 sheets per event), you could set up a current events wiki or blog. Each student would be required to post a link to each article, (like I do here) then annotate that link (sort of what I do here, but better). Students could then respond to that post in comments. You will have to remember that links to current news events will go down quickly, as major news sources charge for archives. Instead of posting a link, the student could post the article in MLA format, with the link, then the annotation. Students, or you, could find the archived article in the magazine database at www.ncwiseowl.org. Remember, if Lucy and Ethel can blog and wiki, so can you.

FREE, and I mean FREE online reference sources

I have been sent a link for a remarkable set of free online reference sources. This page links to free online reference websites that our students can use instead of blithely searching the Internet! Click on this title for ALA's website of Best Free Reference Websites.

Another great website!

As you are looking for resources for next semester, check out TeachersFirst. This website is packed with links to many, many resources, lesson plans, tech articles, teacher tools, etc. I have linked you to a page that lists the web links by subject and grade level, but once you are there, click on the tabs at the top of the site to find even more great info and links!

Have you had something del.ci.ious today?

I want to introduce you to a new web tool I am using called del.icio.us (pronounced delicious). So far, I am a beginner at using this tool, and am only using it to hold my bookmarks, but I really love it. I promise you, if I can figure out how to use it, anyone can! I have installed del.icio.us on my computer here and at home, and it pops a nifty toolbar in my Explorer bar. Now, when I go to a site I want to visit again, I just click the TAG button. Del.icio.us can bring up my bookmarks no matter what computer I am on--here, school, the public library, Paris (I wish). I could also share my bookmarks with all users, or a group of users. To read more about it, check out this informative article at PBS' Learning Source. It goes into more detail on all the things you can do with your del.icio.us account!

Websites to guide student research

I have found several websites I'd like to share that help guide students through the research process.

Springfield Township High School Virtual Library Research Guide
IMSA Full Circle Resource Kit
CRLS Research Guide
ODU Libraries Idea Generator
Oregon School Library Information System

Google Workshop for Faculty

I'll be having a faculty workshop on Google on February 7th, 2007 during each planning bell and after school. I will teach you skills that will amaze and amuse you and your friends and family! I will teach you how to set up a Google account (which you need to post to my blogs), set up a personalized Google search page, advanced Google searches, and other amazing feats! This will take up the entire planning bell--but you will leave here with extraordinary Googling abilities!